Maximizing Your Potential

Neither do we receive the incentive to grow and be creative because our new ideas may interfere with the conventional way of doing things. Say, for example, that you are hired to be a receptionist in a manufacturing company. Invoices, orders, replacement parts, personal mail, trade journals— everything comes through your desk before being distributed. Because the company is a large one, you spend much of your day sending out mail or deciding who should receive incoming mail. This prevents you from presenting the company to the public as effectively as you would like and often delays the routing of important contracts and specifications. Thus, you propose that all outside vendors and salesmen should be notified that their business will receive prompter attention if it is addressed directly to the department to which it pertains. Invoices should be sent to accounts payable, payments to accounts receivable, shipping instructions to the expediting office, parts to the supply room, etc. Your proposal is not implemented, however, because the receptionist has always opened all the mail. Indeed, you are criticized for being lazy and inefficient because you cannot handle both the mail and your other duties as the company’s gatekeeper. Most likely, it will be a long time before you make another suggestion to improve this company. The tragedy is that the tradition, which probably served its purpose well when it was started, prevents the accomplishment of the purpose for which it was established. When the manufacturing company was small, it made sense to have the receptionist open all the mail and stamp it received because she also served as the secretary for the various departments. Now that the company has grown and each department has secretaries and clerks within it, the continuation of that tradition is self-defeating. Disorganization, rather than efficiency, is the result. Remember, no matter how good the present system is, there’s always a better way. Don’t be imprisoned by the comfort of the known. Be an explorer, not just a passenger. Don’t allow yourself to become trapped by tradition or you will do and become nothing. Your present level of success will be your highest level of success, and God, who is not trapped within tradition, will find someone else to do what you could have done. Use your imagination. Dream big and find new ways to respond to present situations and responsibilities. Then you will uncover never-ending possibilities that inspire you to reach for continually higher achievements. We are sons of the “Creator,” who created us to be creative. Nowhere in Scripture did God repeat an identical act. Refrain from accepting or believing, “We’ve never done it that way before.” Now is the time to try something different. The release of your full potential demands that you move beyond the present traditions of your home, family, job,